


Si tu meurs, que tu sois loin de moi

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: (everyone has a lot of feelings and few of them are good ones), (internalized but still), 1940s, Ableism, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter, Bisexual Lucy Preston, Canon-Typical Violence, Declarations Of Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Female Friendship, Français | French, Friendship, Historical Figures, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Multilingual Character, Music, One Shot, Self-Esteem Issues, Smoking, Some Humor, Star Wars References, Tacos, Team Dynamics, Time Travel, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-20 04:15:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20669171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: Inspired by Chapter 9 of a fic byAndreaChristoph, this fic takes a different spin on a scenario in which Lucy has to find Flynn in a postwar Parisian nightclub. (Is this largely an excuse to have them meet Édith Piaf? In my case, at least, absolutely.) I was intrigued by the set-up, but wanted a different outcome for them.





	Si tu meurs, que tu sois loin de moi

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Let Her Go](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18165242) by [AndreaChristoph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaChristoph/pseuds/AndreaChristoph). 

It is a long campaign and a bitter one.

Wyatt takes a hand off the steering wheel and scratches his three-day stubble. “I always used to wonder what it would’ve been like to fight in World War Two.”

Rufus raises his eyebrows. “Everyone talking about how great a war it was didn’t clue you in to the fact that it must have been terrible?”

“Point taken.” For a few minutes they rattle along in silence, stars bright over the dirt road. “Not that different from other wars, that way,” says Wyatt. “Technology: terrifyingly clunky. Nazi-fighting: very satisfying. Pros and cons.”

“And you got to commandeer a truck with a German name I can’t even pronounce,” says Rufus sleepily.

Wyatt grins across at him. “There’s that. Krupp-Protze. One to brag about to my grandpa. If he were around.”

“Or your grandkids.” There is another silence.

“You think we’ll get Jess back, then?” Wyatt’s voice is hoarse.

“Absolutely.”

“You know what Lucy always says: ‘yes’ is a comfort; ‘absolutely’ is not.”

“Yeah,” says Rufus, “but it’s kind of her job to overthink things.”

Wyatt laughs, a little thickly. “Thanks.”

They reach the Lifeboat when dawn is still only a sickly glow. When they have been there half an hour, Wyatt starts to pace.

“I hate splitting up.”

“She’ll be fine,” says Rufus automatically.

“I just… she shouldn’t… The average life expectancy for agents over here was measured in _weeks_,” says Wyatt. “And they had training.”

“There,” says Rufus, pointing. “Over there. On a bicycle.”

“Jesus,” says Wyatt. The small figure on the horizon grows gradually closer, its outline becoming familiar. There is just enough light to make out the color of her green suit. “Christ,” says Wyatt.

“My mama would have something to say about your praying like that,” remarks Rufus.

“But because we are friends,” Wyatt says, “she is never going to find out.”

“Right.” 

The bicycle comes creaking and bumping to a stop, and its rider hits her ankle on the pedal.

“Lucy!”

“Ow.”

“You all right?”

“Yeah, I just — ow — caught a bone on hard metal. No big deal.”

“But you’re all right?” Wyatt is holding her by the forearms; Rufus is holding the bicycle. 

“Fine,” says Lucy, and manages a shaky smile. She hugs them both in turn. “I’m fine. I have the plans, Flynn has the agents. Everything work out on your end?”

“We’re pros,” says Rufus. “Glamorous Americans, apparently. I don’t know why everyone says French people are rude. All French grandmas want to do is feed you and help you outwit Nazis, apparently.”

“Good,” says Lucy, and lets out a breath.

“So,” says Wyatt, “there’s no good way to say this, but… how long do we wait?”

Lucy crosses her arms over herself. “Until it’s light.”

At first, they walk, stamping and pacing, keeping their blood moving. As it grows lighter, as they hear the noises of cows and cocks and sheep, they sit huddled together, in the lee of the Lifeboat, trying to stay warm.

“1941 is a bad year for us,” says Rufus morosely. “We keep circling back to it. It’s the kind of thing that gives time travel a bad name.”

“And Nazis,” says Wyatt.

“And Nazis,” agrees Rufus. Lucy says nothing.

She is the first to stand up. Wyatt gives her a hand to get to her feet; neither man comments on her shaking. “Okay. We go.”

“It… the sun’s going to get a lot brighter later on,” says Rufus.

She gives him a watery smile. “Yeah. It’ll be over the trees in a minute, and the Lifeboat will be visible, and we do not want to deal with the fallout of secret military exercises having been spotted here at the height of a world war. We go.”

“Shit,” says Wyatt, and spits.

“We have to go,” says Lucy, and begins, silently, to cry.

They return to the bunker that is home, and Connor’s face changes the minute he sees Rufus, and Jiya throws herself into the arms of the man she loves. Lucy, not quite steady on her feet, puts aside Wyatt’s hand. She marches straight up to Denise, buries her head in the older woman’s shoulder, and begins to sob.

Wyatt clears his throat. “I can… I can get you the mission report, Jiya, when you’re ready for that.” Jiya’s face is stricken, but she nods.

It is not their last expedition, but it is nearly the last.

“I fucking _hate_ not having another soldier,” says Wyatt between gritted teeth in 1967. “What do you say, Rufus? You think Flynn feels some kind of disturbance in the Force when I find myself missing him?”

“No idea,” says Rufus, “but I’m right there with you.”

They get back from 1871 to find Jess sitting at the kitchen table. Denise is knitting something that looks unmistakably child-sized. There are four cups of tea set out, and the smell of peppermint is in the air.

Wyatt sits down hard on the third step of the gangway. 

Jess looks up at him. “Interrogation’s over,” she says. “I think I passed. And I am so, so sorry.”

“Wow,” says Rufus. “You’re here!”

“Rufus,” says Jiya in a dangerous voice, “she got you _killed_.”

“Pretty sure that was Emma,” says Rufus. He puts his hands on Jiya’s shoulders, begins to massage them. “So, uh… do we get a report from you guys this time?”

“We have intel,” says Denise. “We can go after Rittenhouse in the present. And then it should be over.”

“Let’s hope so,” says Lucy, and disappears in the direction of the bedroom that has become hers.

“Wyatt?” Jess’ voice is unsteady.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, just… give me a minute. Or a year, or an hour, or…” He swallows. “Is it a girl or a boy?”

Jess gives him a crooked smile. “I thought,” she said, “that we could find out together. If you want.”

In the end, it is a two-pronged mission. Neatly and unsensationally, Denise moves with the unofficial power of several agencies against Emma and Rittenhouse in the present, while their attention is on their agents in 1904, where the Time Team is moving against them. 

“You look really good as Anastasia, I’ll have you know,” says Rufus to Lucy, and she smiles at him from beneath the fur cap.

When they get back, it is all over. Connor hands around the good whisky in the good china, and Lucy stares disbelieving at the intersecting lines of a history in which she will never again be asked to intervene. She may interpret, and uncover, and debate, but never again will she step back into the impossible tangle of human desire and fear and need, and try to help history chart its course. Lucy swallows the whisky so quickly that it burns her throat, and Connor refills her teacup without comment.

***

A year later, Lucy still feels as though normal life is something of a charade, no less a role to play than those she took on in the past. _Dr. Lucy Preston, History Department_. Quietly she writes to colleagues and mentors in search of recommendation letters, and begins applying for other jobs. She pictures a small campus somewhere, an electric kettle in her office, time to mentor students who are looking for more than a degree that says Stanford on it.

Two years later, she is back in the Bay Area, eating tacos on a rainy restaurant patio from which you cannot quite see the Pacific.

“You should leave the frozen Midwest,” says Rufus.

“It’s not frozen.”

“I lived in Chicago; you can’t lie to me.”

“I like the college,” says Lucy.

“What the other half of this duprass is trying to say,” says Jiya, “is that we miss you.”

“I miss you too,” says Lucy, and tells herself she’s not going to cry into the pickled onions.

“Also…” says Rufus, and looks over at Jiya. 

“No,” says Jiya. “Later. Over more beer.” 

Lucy looks between both of them. “If you’re trying to tell me that you’re getting married, I promise I will save the date.”

Jiya laughs. “No. I mean, not really. Not right now. It’s kind of tied to the other thing.”

“You are being very mysterious,” complains Lucy. Secretly, she is grateful for the excuse to feign annoyance, to distract herself from the ache in her throat and her chest. “Are you going to adopt a dog?”

“Probably,” says Rufus.

“We need to decide what to name it first,” says Jiya.

“Is this a fight?”

“It’s a _tournament_,” says Rufus loftily, and Lucy cannot suppress her laughter.

Jiya cooks dinner, while Rufus tries to teach Lucy a video game set in ancient Greece. (“Why can’t I climb stairs like a normal person?” she asks, and sends them both into giggles.) 

“Okay,” says Jiya after dinner, when Rufus has washed and Lucy has dried the dishes, when they are all in an amiably cosy row on the futon. “We have a top secret project to tell you about.”

“That has always ended badly for me,” deadpans Lucy.

“Yeah,” says Rufus. Again he and Jiya exchange looks, and for a moment, the little apartment seems very quiet to Lucy, the lights of San José very distant.

“We’ve been running tests,” continues Rufus. Whatever the signal was that Jiya gave, Lucy didn’t catch it. “Designed our own algorithms, ran for facial recognition, word recognition, types of events…”

“Are you trying to talk me into a book project, Rufus?” At some level, Lucy knows that she is stalling. She is afraid of whatever knowledge this is, that is so important, that she needs to be prepared for and protected from before it is handed to her.

“We think we found Flynn,” says Jiya, and Lucy feels the blood drain from her face.

“Okay,” Lucy hears herself say. “What evidence do you…” she begins, and then she bursts into tears.

“Sorry,” she says, when Jiya has returned with a box of tissues. Rufus has put one arm firmly around her shoulders, allowed her to curl into his side. 

“Don’t mention it,” he says loyally. “You want to see a picture?”

“Is he dead?”

“What?” It is a unison cry, succeeded by a cacophony. “No, what the heck, Lucy…”

Lucy swallows. “It would be good to know, if he were; I just meant I don’t want to see his corpse.” She is surprised by the steadiness of her own voice.

“No,” says Rufus. “No, the point is… we think he survived. We think he made it out. If we’re right, we’ve found a pattern. If we’re right, we think we’ve found him working with refugees and DPs in France, after the war.”

“Oh,” says Lucy. _Of course._

“Under your name,” says Jiya.

“Which Jiya thought to check for,” adds Rufus.

“Oh,” says Lucy again.

“We have a newspaper photograph,” says Jiya, and opens her laptop. “From a concert in Paris. We think he’s…” she says, but Lucy has already seen him. He is one face among many, visible in a chance-caught moment. He looks like the other men of the generation he has fallen into: marked by suffering, holding secrets. Lucy half-stretches out her hand towards the screen, as though she could touch him, as though she could smooth out the lines etched into his face. She has imagined him in photos before — a profile, a gesture that, for an instant, looks familiar. What she recognizes, this time, are the eyes, too large for his face, intense and aching. Lucy tries not to think: _desperate._

“Lucy?” says Rufus.

“Yes,” she says. She can feel the hair on her arms prickle into gooseflesh. “Yes.”

“We were presuming,” says Rufus cautiously, after a few more moments, “that you would want to go after him.”

Lucy takes a deep breath, forces herself to look away from the screen. She smiles into the anxious faces of her friends. “Oh, yes,” says Lucy.

Jiya, it turns out, has gotten her a dress. “That looks…” says Lucy.

“I bought the fabric secondhand and had it tailored. Your measurements are still on file from the missions.”

“Oh,” says Lucy, and puts her hand out to the burgundy silk. “No one is wearing dresses this nice in 1947 Paris.”

“So sue me,” says Jiya unrepentantly; “I’m not a historian.”

“We figured,” says Rufus, “that black shoes would be fine. That costume archive isn’t getting use otherwise, except for when Jiya and I decide to win Hallowe’en competitions.” 

“Yes,” says Lucy. “I… yes.”

“We’ll let you get your rest,” says Jiya decisively. But Lucy spends a mostly sleepless night researching: public transit, neighborhoods, politics, food. They take her out to the Lifeboat the next morning. 

“Technically,” says Rufus, “you were never here. Guests aren’t supposed to be on this part of the campus.”

“Got it,” says Lucy, through lips stiff with cold. “I trust you to use your powers for good.”

“Always. I’ve plugged in the coordinates for you. This should take you to a rail yard, where you can just… stash the Lifeboat among other large objects.”

Lucy smiles at him. “We’ve had weirder plans.”

“Low bar, but yeah. Do you want me to come?” asks Rufus anxiously. “We thought, you know, minimum disturbance, and…”

“Of course,” says Lucy quickly. “You guys are great.” She stands on her tiptoes to hug him, and then turns to Jiya. “I love you both,” she says into Jiya’s shoulder.

“You too, Lacey. Look after yourself. And tell Flynn from me that…” Lucy draws back from the embrace, waits for her to complete the sentence. “Nothing,” says Jiya, shaking her head. “Anything. That I miss him. That I want him to walk me down the aisle. That I’ll give him my recipe for kebbeh pie.”

“Tell him I’ve forgiven him for getting me shot.”

“I will,” says Lucy. “I will. I love you both.”

“You said that,” says Jiya tearfully.

“Yeah.” Lucy takes a deep breath, climbs into the Lifeboat. “In case I don’t get to tell you later,” she says, “thank you.”

***

It is surreal, of course, to be in the Lifeboat again, hurtled through time and space, adrift in the darkness and more centered than she has felt in a long time. It is more surreal still to be back in Paris, back in the past, walking sure-footed along slick pavements and through history, once again a woman on a mission.

Lucy tries, without much success, to imagine scenarios. She has to find him at the concert; she has to pray that they won’t miss each other by half an hour, now that she has come more than seventy years for him. If he were to break down, how would she explain his grief? If he were to explode, how would she counter his anger? And if he were to refuse to come back with her… that Lucy tries very hard not to imagine. That, she tries to tell herself, is impossible: more improbable than his survival, more unthinkable than the fact that she is here, despite time and fate and death, to claim him.

The club feels crowded, and is unexpectedly smoky. Lucy has become unused to the twentieth-century haze of polite society’s cigarettes. Applause over the orchestra ebbs away, silenced by respect for the tiny figure on the stage. There, in a dark dress, alone and absolutely commanding, is La Môme. 

_Cet air qui m'obsède jour et nuit_  
_Cet air n'est pas né d'aujourd'hui_  
_Il vient d'aussi loin que je viens…_

Lucy looks around the club, and feels panic rise to choke her. How is she to find him in this crowd? Would she be thrown out, if she started screaming for him? _Padam, padam, padam…_ Lucy starts to wave off an approaching waiter, and thinks better of it. “Je cherche quelqu’un,” she says. “Un Monsieur Preston?” The man gives a shrug entirely uncorrupted by American influence, and moves away.

_Il dit 'rappelle-toi tes amours_  
_Rappelle-toi puisque c'est ton tour_  
_Y a pas d'raison pour qu'tu n'pleures pas_  
Avec tes souvenirs sur les bras...' 

Lucy starts to move around the periphery of the tables, Édith Piaf demanding that she weep over the burden of memory, that she refuse regret, that she go out to meet love. _I’m trying,_ thinks Lucy, _I’m trying._ And then she sees him, and it becomes impossible to breathe. He is sitting alone, and absolutely still. She allows herself to remember this: that she has always loved his stillness. Even now, uncertainty tries to threaten her — it’s not him, it’s not true, it can’t be, you’ve been fooled — but she still wants to throw herself down beside his chair, grab his hands in hers. _It’s all right, it’s all right, it’s over, you can come home._

In the closing measures, Piaf beats her own breast like a penitent, turns away with a hand to her brow, as if she cannot obey her own command, as though there are some pasts too painful to face. Under the cover of the applause, Lucy moves forward between the tables. She finds that, in this setting, she misses his presence at her back, his warmth at her side. On his right there is an empty chair. Lucy sits down without asking permission.

“Flynn,” says Lucy softly. She sees him stiffen; and then, very slowly, he turns to look at her. Lucy thinks belatedly that she should have focused on preparing herself to say anything at all, faced with him.

“It’s me,” says Lucy. “I’ve come for you. And I’m sorry. I made the decision to leave,” she explains. She can feel tears gathering behind her eyes. “I told Wyatt and Rufus that we had to leave.” There is a new scar over his left eyebrow. “We won the war,” says Lucy. “And I love you,” she adds, “but you already knew that, or I hope you did.”

He inhales, and she can hear his breath shaking. “Lucy,” says Flynn.

“Yes.” She finds herself smiling. She reaches for his right hand, takes it in both hers. “Yes.”

“Lucy,” says Flynn.

“Please tell me you weren’t alone,” she says suddenly. “Please, whatever happened — I want to know; you don’t have to tell me — I just… I want to know that you weren’t alone.”

“I wasn’t alone,” says Flynn, so gently that she suspects him, for one instant, of lying. And then he gives her a pale, fleeting smile. “I had good comrades.”

“What did you do?”

“What I know how to do,” says Flynn, his voice still soft, his eyes still painfully intense as they search her face. “Fought the bad guys.”

“Saved the world,” rejoins Lucy.

“Did my best.”

“I love you.” She feels as though she is choking on the words, as though she can say nothing else until she has said this.

“Yes,” says Flynn, and his hand tightens on hers. “I never doubted that.”

“I didn’t want you to… I didn’t want you to get back and find us gone and think that…”

“No,” says Flynn quickly, with an arrested gesture. “No. I never thought that,” he says seriously. “I didn’t make it back that night, anyway.” He adds it as though to reassure her, and Lucy presses her lips together and fights down the desire to go into his arms, to console herself for his danger, to convince herself of his solidity. He tears his gaze away from her, as though dazzled, as though in pain. “Lucy,” he says, and his voice trembles, “tell me things that I could not have imagined.”

_Oh._ “I’ve left Stanford,” says Lucy, when she can trust herself to speak. “I’m still teaching history. Rufus and Jiya send their love.” She looks at his face, rigid and set, and decides that if you can’t commit public indecency in a smoky Parisian nightclub in 1947, there’s no justice in the world. Still holding his hand, she turns to throw her leg over his knee. Lucy settles herself comfortably against him, his arm coming around her waist slowly, as if relearning the gesture. 

“There,” says Lucy against his ear. “Imagine that.” And then she sees his other arm. The wool sleeve of the suit is very neatly pinned a little below the elbow. He has taken care, she notices, to match the chalk-stripe pattern when pinning it. Lucy swallows past the lump in her throat. “I’m at a small liberal arts college,” she says. “There’s a karaoke party every year… masterminded by the history department, of course. There’s a sweet little town; there’s a cobbler’s, run by an old man who mends all my shoes and insisted on mending my briefcase. You’d like it,” says Lucy, and realizes that she is crying.

“I’ve rented a Craftsman house,” she whispers. “It’s much too big for me, of course. I host things there. Potluck,” she adds, and feels the choked sob of his laughter against her neck. “We have parties that spill from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room. And the upstairs is almost empty. I sleep on a fold-out daybed in one of the smaller bedrooms. I keep a desk there. We could buy a bed,” says Lucy, “at one of the antiques shops. We could buy a magnificent four-poster, and haul it up the ancient stairs, and then we could buy a quilt for it.”

“Lucy,” says Flynn, and there is agony in his voice.

“Yes?”

“Lucy, I…” He brings his left arm up to rest against her waist, a little clumsily. “Lucy, I can’t…”

She kisses him, and he tastes of smoke and salt. “Can’t what?” She hooks her ankles around his calf, rocks gently against his thigh, savoring the slide of wool against silk. “Can’t _what_, Garcia Flynn?”

He shakes his head slightly. “Ask you to…” She buries both her hands in his hair, and kisses him again, and harder. “Don’t you dare,” says Lucy breathlessly against his mouth. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence. Tell me,” she demands, between kisses, “anything you like. But don’t you ever think of yourself as a burden to me, Garcia.” 

For a moment after she draws back from him he stares at her, dazed. And then he embraces her so suddenly that she is thrown off balance, clinging to him. He murmurs against her ear nothing that she understands, prayer or apology or vow.

“Tell me you’ll come home with me,” says Lucy. “Tell me you’ll come home with me.”

“Oui.” This emerges clearly enough. “Oui, da, yes.”

“Eh bien,” says an unmistakable voice, very close to them, “tu l’as retrouvé.” 

“Disons plutôt qu’elle m’a retrouvé,” says Flynn, as Lucy looks up into the unmistakable face of Édith Piaf: impish, resilient, tender.

“Ah oui?” says the singer, beaming at Lucy, and Lucy can think of nothing at all to say, except by giving her back her own words.

“Dieu réunit ceux qui s’aiment,” says Lucy, and again Piaf smiles, and moves away on her progress, generous as a monarch.

“You should probably,” says Lucy quietly, “tell the UN or whoever you’re working with that you’re leaving, so they don’t call the police out to look for you.”

“Yes,” says Flynn.

“We’ll need to stay the night,” says Lucy.

“Yes,” says Flynn.

“_Mon cher_, are you listening?” He takes her hand in his and kisses it. “Well then,” says Lucy. “Take me to your rented room. Open the window so that we can hear the rain in the trees. Make love to me once before midnight and twice before dawn. Take me home with you, Garcia Flynn, and then come home with me.”

“I…” says Flynn, and then tries again. “You…”

Lucy Preston smiles. She kisses him — first on the mouth, and then on the folded edge of his pinned sleeve. “I,” she says, “am the genius who loves you.”

**Author's Note:**

> The line that Lucy gives (back) to Édith Piaf is "God reunites those who love each other," from the 1949/50 "Hymne à l'Amour," written after Piaf had lost the man she loved.
> 
> Piaf's gestures are inspired by this performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmguyDRBwU


End file.
